What's New/Happening This Month...

June 19th 7PM - OVARC Membership Meeting -

via Zoom

In previous years our June Member Meeting typically had some commentary about Hamvention which occurs every year in May.

Of course, Hamvention did not happen this year. Not only were hams disappointed but vendors were disappointed as they had no audience to show their latest and greatest ham radio gadgets.

In checking with some of the Hamvention organizers, I reached out to a couple of vendors that would have normally attended to see if they would like to have some OVARC “air-time”. As I suspected they were delighted with the opportunity to tell OVARC about their latest offerings.

So at the June 19th OVARC ZOOM Member Meeting we will have a Mini-Vendor Night. We’ll “stage” 4 vendors to give us all a pitch. I agreed to allow them to promote any and all things that they offer pertaining to amateur radio. The following vendors have agreed to participate:

- West Mountain Radio

- DX Engineering

- Northwest Digital

- Flex Radio Systems

It should be an informative meeting. Maybe one of these companies might pass along an OVARC-Only discount too. Hope to see you on ZOOM on Friday June 19th. Detailed Zoom information will be available closer to the meeting date. 73!

June 27th-28th: ARRL Field Day -

WORK FROM HOME!

This year only, Class 1D (home station on commercial power) may contact another Class 1D station for score credit.

Also several OVARC members petitioned ARRL to publish aggregate club scores this year. Though they do so for other contests, ARRL initially refused, but our campaign has now succeeded so the club gets credit for every contact made by members at home.

This is good news! Make sure that when you submit your FD summary to ARRL, you put Oro Valley Amateur Radio Club on the line requesting club affiliation. Disregard the instruction that club membership counts only for class A and F stations.

I encourage OVARC members to get on the air on FD (June 27-28) as sole operator, thus continuing to practice "social distancing". Use your own call but be sure to include OVARC as your club on the FD summary sheet you submit. I will suggest to the Coconino club that the trophy should go to the club with the greatest number of individual operations submitting logs to ARRL.

FIELD DAY 2020 SIMPLIFIED

If you plan to operate FD using only FT8 and FT4, there is no need to involve N1MM software. FD is a very simple contest. There are no multipliers. Your summary for submission requires only the number of contacts made per mode and band. Digital QSOs are worth 2 points each. For a score, you multiply number of digital contacts by 2 and again by 2 if you use <150 watts power. Some bonus points (see the rules at arrl.org/field-day) are available to one-operator stations and some are not. In past years, ARRL has required submission of a "dupe sheet" listing callsigns of stations worked. Since N1MM doesn't export such a document, I always submit my Cabrillo log and they have accepted it. 2020 rules now allow that. They may change that requirement since no contest software that I know of generates "dupe sheets". That's a hangover from the paper & pencil days.

Download the complete FD packet which includes rules and submission sheets:

Other 2020 OVARC Membership Meetings...

Due to concern for the health of our members/guests, and in compliance with CDC, State, and Local Government directives, REGULAR OVARC Membership meetings will not resume until an "all clear" is announced by these agencies. Until then, we hope to schedule more "Zoom" meetings. Check back here often for updates! Thank you for your cooperation.